She pulls a portable cart with a black plastic bag inside to hold the groceries she will pay for with food stamps. She muses, in Spanish, about her difficulties. The story that accompanied the photo highlights the challenges faced by low-income residents seeking affordable grocery stores.

Would your perception of Calderon change if her name were Joan Smith? Or Regina Khol? Or Binh Tran? What if she were identified as white, or black, or Latino, or Asian, or Irish, or Canadian or Native American? What if the story told you she was native-born, a legal resident or an undocumented worker?

How does the picture change for you if you plugged in all that data? What perceptions or judgments crop up?

So many questions. So few clear answers.

Some readers want to know everything they can about the subjects that appear in news stories. Some journalists seek out all the information they can about the people they interview and profile.

The questions for both are how much information needs to be in the story and what information puts the story in the proper perspective. For the reader and the journalist, context becomes essential to better understand the people profiled and the story being told.

So what's the answer?

Well, as someone who spent many years as a professional journalist, and then taught professional journalists about diversity and ethics, the answer is clear: It depends.

It depends on the type of story being told. It depends on the people interviewed for the story and why they were interviewed. It depends on how complete and fair a picture the news organization wants to present of the people who live in its community. It depends on what the reader needs to understand the story and the people in it.

The Oregonian editor and reporter who worked on the story featuring Calderon saw her as emblematic of the struggle faced by people with little money and even fewer food choices. The information they sought and reported reflected a desire to explain what happens to people who find themselves living in a "food desert." They wanted to explore what these people must do to find affordable groceries.

The reporter and photographer found Calderon after knocking on the doors of an apartment complex occupied with people struggling to find healthy foods, wrote Susan Gage, a managing editor at The Oregonian, when I asked her in an e-mail about how they decided whom to focus on.

The descriptors most relevant to the story were Calderon's income, proximity to stores and other economic indicators such as the lack of a car and no direct public transportation, she added. What about her ethnicity? "Whether she's white, Latino, Russian or African American doesn't matter -- it has nothing to do with her ethnicity. It's the circumstance we're representing. And that's why it never came up," Gage wrote.

Paige Parker, the reporter who covered the story, told me in an e-mail interview that Calderon's "journey mirrored the journeys of many others who live in her neighborhood and depend on public transportation. She was willing to let us accompany her, and her next trip to the store coincided with our window for reporting."

When asked why she didn't say what Calderon's citizen status was, Parker said the story wasn't about immigration. It was "about how access to supermarkets affects consumption of produce." She said the story she wrote was intended "to alert readers to public health's concern that where we live is directly tied to whether we experience many chronic diseases."

Her story struck a chord. She said she's heard from about 340 readers, the most she's ever heard from in her eight years at The Oregonian.

Many readers have offered to help the Calderons and others in their shoes by giving them free lifts to the grocery store. Others lashed out at the woman on the assumption that she is not a legal resident and ripping off taxpayers by using food stamps and public transportation. The story never addressed her legal status.

For journalism to work best it should be a two-way street.

Journalists bear a responsibility to seek and publish the truth as they see it. That requires a dedication to fairness, thoroughness and transparency. Readers should seek to remain abreast of current issues. That requires approaching the news with care, holding journalists accountable and informing journalists about information the reader knows and the journalists don't. The honest and conscientious interaction between the two yields a more comprehensive, vital and lively form of journalism.

But that's still a work in progress. In the meantime, readers do question news organizations when they see, or fail to see, certain racial, ethnic or citizen status descriptors. And some news organizations have adopted reporting and style guidelines regarding racial/ethnic identification.

The Dallas Morning News, for example, requires that any descriptions about suspects in crime stories should provide enough physical traits that would be helpful in identifying the individual. If the description is too vague, the newspaper prefers to not use it.

Rafael Olmeda, a journalist at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel who was recently president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, says he wants to know the journalistic purpose before he uses a racial, ethnic or status piece of information.

"Is there relevance to the overall story or not?" he asks. "If the story is about immigration issues, then her status is relevant. If it's not about being here illegally, or legally, what's the purpose of using it?"

The Oregonian's style guide lists accuracy, flexibility and calling people what they wish as keys to the newspaper's ethnic identification policy. "The first question should always be: Is this label necessary or relevant?"

How we refer to people from other countries who enter the United States without a passport or visa presents a challenging situation. The terms, or labels, we use have political, legal and cultural implications. It frames the way we, as a country, and we, as citizens, see them and treat them.

I think how we describe people deserves more thought. My inclination is to stay away from labels as much as possible. Instead, journalists should try to describe as accurately as they can the people they are covering. The more specific, the better. What journalists think they are saving by using a label and fewer words, they more than make up for in confusion, bias, prejudice and distortion.

Journalists should ask questions that help make clear why they are describing the people the way they are. I would ask questions to obtain information that helps journalists do what they say they want to do: be accurate, specific and fair.

So, do The Oregonian's readers have a right to ask about Calderon's ethnicity and legal status? Certainly. Just as much right as The Oregonian has to stay true to the story it seeks to tell and to focus on the facts that help readers understand the story in its authentic context.

Aly Colon is the former director of diversity programs, ethics group leader and the Reporting, Writing and Editing group leader at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla.